Posted Thursday, February 18, 2010 03:32 PM
Google could be earning some $497 million a year from the registered owners of website addresses that mimic typographical errors in existing sites, according to a new study.
Harvard University researchers Tyler Moore and Benjamin Edelman estimate that Google could be making millions from the practice, known as “typosquatting,” because its network of display ads — from which it receives a cut of the profits — run on the typo’d sites.
If it’s a frequently misspelled site address — for example, zddnet.com instead of yours truly –the tactic could pay off handsomely.
Moore and Edelman used a list of common spelling mistakes to generate another list of possible typo domains for the 3,264 most popular “.com” websites, as determined by Alexa.com rankings.
With help from software, the researchers crawled 285,000 of some 900,000 “misspelled” sites to estimate what revenue the domains are generating.
Scale those results, and you’re looking at some serious coin:
Expanding to the top 100,000 sites, retaining the 0.7% estimated ratio of typosquatting site, we estimate that typo domains collectively receive at least 68.2 million daily visitors. If these typo domains were treated as a single website, that site would be ranked by Alexa as t... [More]
Posted Sunday, August 16, 2009 11:49 AM
In a stark reversal of the trend on display just a few short months ago--when general retail sales were plummeting even as the video games industry was still showing growth--cautious optimism in retail is now being offset by many losing months in video games.
In July, according to industry analyst the NPD Group, video game sales fell for the fifth straight month, and the year-over-year numbers are striking: In July, the video games business posted sales of $848.9 million, down 29 percent from $1.1 billion a year earlier. Year-to-date sales, reported NPD, were at $8.16 billion, down 14 percent from the same time period a year ago.
And things are only getting worse. While the industry's June numbers were down a full 31 percent from a year earlier, they still topped nine figures, coming in at $1.17 billion in June. But that means that in July, sales were down 27.4 percent from just a month earlier.
It wasn't that long ago that many people were making the argument that video games--because of their relatively low cost and many hours of entertainment value--were seen as close to recession-proof. But now, it would be hard for anyone to make that case.
Indeed, NPD analyst Anita Frazier wrote in a report Thursday that, "In order for the industry to come in flat or slightly up for the total year, the bac... [More]
Posted Friday, August 07, 2009 11:29 AM
I have been up here for a few days and Trump Plaza is letting me spread 1 to 20 units and not even batting an eye. They are dealing all but one deck and a few dealers actually dealt in the last deck.
This place must be desperate for play. I haven't seen this much deck penetration since the early 90's. Even a couple of months ago it wasn't like this.
Shhhhh........
Posted Tuesday, August 04, 2009 08:17 AM
Fox says it will not air an upcoming 'Family Guy' episode that deals with abortion, the
Live Feed reports.
The network announced its decision in a statement released earlier this afternoon, adding that Fox executives "fully support the producers' right to make the episode and distribute it in whatever way they want."
Series creator Seth MacFarlane appeared ready for the decision when he spoke during 'Family Guy''s Comic-Con panel discussion on Saturday. "20th Century Fox, as always, allowed us to produce the episode and then said, 'You know what? We're scared to ******* death of this,'" he said, according to the
Live Feed.
MacFarlane later clarified via e-mail, saying, "Clearly my sarcasm doesn't come across in print. I completely support whatever decision Fox makes. We were allowed to take a crack at this controversial story and that's enough for me."
Not much else was revealed about the episode, titled 'Partial Terms of Endearment,' except that it may still be released on DVD.